


couldn't see you coming

by Belgium



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Footnotes, Four idiots, Gen, M/M, chensung make cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-05 18:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15869292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belgium/pseuds/Belgium
Summary: There's nothing Donghyuck loves more than a secret (okay, fine, he actually loves his #BFFLs the most, but that’s beside the point), which is why he is determined to uncover the truth when Jaemin hypothesizes that Renjun has a secret boyfriend.





	couldn't see you coming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [friday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/friday/gifts).
  * Inspired by [who could love you better](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15347727) by [friday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/friday/pseuds/friday). 



> A big thank you to **friday** for your hilarious fic! The original was so full of heart and charming and I hope that I captured even like 5% of its essence ahhh. I hope that you enjoy and that you are loving Dream's comeback as much as I am :D
> 
> Title is from "Ivy" by Frank Ocean ♡
> 
> About the footnotes: You can definitely skip them if you want, but for your convenience everything is linked (when you click on the footnote in text it will take you to the footnote and then there will be a link to take you back to where you left off in the text)!

As death inevitably loomed closer to them all, so did, rather annoyingly, college application due dates.

After further deliberation with himself[1], Donghyuck had come to the conclusion that it was far worse to know exactly when Judgment Day was coming[2] than not to know, and that he would much rather live in ignorant bliss and wait for death to swoop in and release him from this hell. Death, at this point, would be considered the tenderest of all mercies.

Donghyuck was not particularly religious (so what if he _happened_ to loiter after Jeno’s semi-reluctant weekly Bible study that one time [3] and _happened_ to run into Mark Lee?). But every so often, when it felt like the universe really had it out for him [4], he would look up at their school’s water-damaged dropped ceiling tiles and pray for the Armageddon to just annihilate them all.

No one would even know what hit them, seeing as all four of them—Donghyuck, Jeno, Jaemin, and Renjun—spent most of their days lounging around at lunch arranged by how catatonic they were feeling that day like a freaking sliding scale, to the unfettered delight of Chenle and Jisung. Well, to mostly Jisung’s delight, who had looked at them one day when they were arranged from Donghyuck (riding the high of owning photos of Mark Lee wearing yoga pants[5]) to Jeno (decided to take up running to numb the pain of being alive but wore the wrong shoes for five miles) and had said that it was like someone had hit `SORT BY PRICE HIGH TO LOW.`

Donghyuck tried not to feel too gratified when second-to-lowest Renjun (drumming his fingers on the table with a tight mouth like he was trying not to laugh—or cry?) looked up from his phone for the first time that whole day and reached across the table to give Jisung the beat down he deserved.

He also did not miss the calculating look Jaemin (did not fail his BC calc test, so suck on that) shot Renjun’s way, but he chalked it up to stress. After all, Jaemin did have the tendency to look at people like he was falling in love with them, or like they were a piece of meat and he was a starving dog, or like they were water and he was a sad, drooping houseplant, or some other flowery metaphor that would delight their 12 AP Lit teacher Mr. Park.

Still, even if it _were_ love [6], Jaemin also had the propensity to declare it as loudly and obnoxiously to as many people as possible. So it was only natural that Donghyuck found it incredibly suspicious when Jaemin only tilted his head at Renjun, shut his mouth, and continued to blab on about whatever alien/government/water supply/Beyoncé conspiracy theory he had left off on before, steadfastly ignoring Renjun when he rolled his eyes and went back to stifle his smile (or tears? Donghyuck still couldn't tell) at his phone.

 

* * *

 

“Something’s up,” Jaemin declared at lunch the next day, gesturing at a Renjun-shaped hole at their table. He was out sick and was mercifully spared from being forced to listen to Jaemin’s farfetched theories.

“Dog,” contributed Jeno, vacuuming a kale salad into his mouth.

“What’s the dog?” whispered Chenle to the table at large.

“No, no, the joke is supposed to be _what’s ‘up dog’_ but Jeno did it wrong,” explained Jisung rather disdainfully.

“Have you guys noticed how weird Renjun’s being?” Jaemin continued bravely on despite his unimpressed audience. “I think he’s hiding something from us.”

Donghyuck did not even look up from his phone, as he was impatiently awaiting his latest Mark Lee fix from Yerim[7]. She had promised him a class photo of Mark when he went to elementary school in New York, and Donghyuck was trying not to think too hard about what their hypothetical scientific miracle baby would look like. “Uh, Injunnie’s _been_ weird,” he countered. “What, have you never noticed?”

Jeno, who did not even laugh at his own stupid botched “up dog” joke, laughed.

“I mean,” Jaemin whined, betrayed, “like, weirder than usual.” He paused for effect, which sort of made Donghyuck think that Jaemin should audition for the spring musical, if only to drive Ms. Bae insane. She would crush him with no mercy. “Like he has a secret boyfriend or something.”

Donghyuck shrugged. “It kind of sounds like you’re jealous to me.”

Jaemin squawked and threw the saran wrap that once encased his kimbap at Donghyuck’s head. “I am _not_ jealous of Injun’s fake boyfriend!”

“So now the boyfriend’s fake?” Donghyuck asked. “What’s the truth?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Jaemin lamented. “If only you guys would listen to me.”

“We listened to you go on about fluoride for thirty minutes yesterday,” Jeno pointed out, swiping a piece of kimbap from under Jaemin’s nose. “Except I tuned out like ten seconds in.”

“That’s a full half-hour of my life I’ll never get back that I could’ve spent studying,” said Jisung, who was only a sophomore and therefore had no right to complain about **A)** the lack of time in a day, **B)** studying, or **C)** literally anything at all, as far as Donghyuck was concerned.

“Is this like a stress flareup from midterms? College apps? Like, you have so much anxiety that your brain couldn’t contain it to only midterms so you’ve started to go insane and are now projecting onto Injun?”

Before he continued his practical application of AP Psych[8] and psychoanalyzed Jaemin any further, Donghyuck stopped himself and instantly felt like a dick when he remembered Jaemin’s old crush on Renjun. What was once a source of joy for him and so many others (okay, maybe just him) was snuffed out by his ignorance.

Contrary to popular belief, Donghyuck never _meant_ to be mean, and especially not to his ride-or-die, matching-tattoo-level BFFLs [9]. But sometimes his mouth chugged along at breakneck speed before his brain could even catch up and he was always forced to backtrack, which was incredibly inconvenient, and it would really be easier for Donghyuck to initiate each conversation with a disclaimer beforehand.

“Wait, I’m really sorry, Nana,” he said, wincing. “I didn’t mean to rub your crush into your face like that. I totally forgot about it, honest.”

“Shut up, I hate you,” said Jaemin, flushing indignantly. “That was literally five hundred years ago and I’m never going to tell you anything ever again for the rest of my life.”

“Fine with me,” Donghyuck bluffed. It was not fine with him. He was nothing if not a gossiping auntie who had to know every dirty detail. In fact, no detail was too dirty.

Jaemin changed gambits then. “Okay, how about this. I’ll bet you anything Renjun has a secret boyfriend.”

Now _that_ was a dirty detail. Whether Donghyuck believed it or not was another story.

“I’m not sure that Renjun is capable of love. He doesn’t even like _us_ ,” pointed out Jeno, absentmindedly eyeing Donghyuck’s fries.

“Whoa, the L word,” Chenle said reverently.

“Okay, no one said anything about _love_. It’s either a devastating crush or a secret boyfriend,” Jaemin amended hastily, then turned to Donghyuck. 

It was like dangling a juicy deer carcass in front of a hungry bear. Damn, Donghyuck could never back down from a bet. He was competitive as well as stubborn as well as nosy to a fault (he was a freaking catch, okay), but so was Jaemin. “Okay, fine, deal,” he said and reached over to shake Jaemin’s hand.

“You should’ve spat in your hands like they do in the movies,” Jisung suggested, which everyone ignored.

“Okay, fine,” Jaemin said, eyes burning into Donghyuck’s. It was almost oddly… _sexy?_ how determined Jaemin was, even though he was dead wrong.

“Great.”

“Nice.”

“Ye—”

“You guys are really the worst, you know that?” Jeno said, interrupting their pissing contest. “Come on, let’s go fail calc.”

 

* * *

 

Renjun showed up to lunch the next day with a Rudolph nose and puffier eyes than normal, but otherwise seemed hale, as evidenced by the passion he displayed while relaying the inconvenience of being bedridden over the weekend.

“I think I overdosed on cough drops,” he recounted in a raspy voice. “I swore I could hear colors.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure those weren’t cough drops,” said Jeno.

“Tripping on cold medicine, nice throwback to 2005. Fuckin’ wild. Who even are you,” said Donghyuck, then cooed with a shade of suggestion, “Poor Injunnie, suffering by himself all alone. What would you do without us?”

Renjun blinked, then snaked a thin arm[10] lovingly[11] around Donghyuck’s neck and squeezed. “Well, thank god you’re with me now, Hyuck,” he cooed back, saccharine sweet. He tickled the underside of Donghyuck’s chin with his non-murder hand. “I was so—” he tightened his chokehold “— _lonely_.”

“Please,” Donghyuck wheezed at large.

“Wow, what a hug,” Jeno remarked dryly. “Gosh, Hyuck, Injun just loves you so much.” He did not lift a hand in attempting to save Donghyuck but did swipe a forkful of Renjun’s mom’s fried rice. Useless.

“Is this what you call love?” demanded Donghyuck, struggling to get away from Renjun’s iron fist but to no avail.

“ _You’re_ not the one Injun loves,” Jaemin blurted out but prevented any questions that made him clarify what he meant by also guzzling down some rice.

Luckily for Jaemin, Renjun only laughed, “hugged” Donghyuck tight for a second longer, and mercifully let him go.

“Oh, word, oxygen,” Donghyuck breathed gratefully and reached for his phone. Yerim’s scheduled fix was about to come in any moment now, and while Donghyuck was admittedly burningly curious about Renjun’s crush/boyfriend/girlfriend who lives in Canada, she had promised blurry flash photos of Mark in a flimsy toga from a party they went to last weekend, which obviously took precedence.

But even as distracted as he was, Donghyuck didn’t miss the way Jaemin stared right into Renjun’s eyes and asked very empathetically, “Hey, you guys want to come over after school and watch _To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before_? I heard it was really good.”

Jeno shrugged. “Sure, why not. No prep school today.”

“Down,” Donghyuck said, mood buoyed by imagining Mark’s toga draped over his shoulders and accentuating his collarbones. “Before midterms fuck us over next week.”

Three pairs of eyes swiveled to Renjun, who had been quietly picking at his rice, slouched as if making himself smaller it would render him invisible. He pushed the rice around the Tupperware from corner to corner with one hand and cracked the knuckles of his other and mumbled, “Ah, actually… Sorry, guys. I would, but I have other plans.”

 

* * *

 

Other plans? _Renjun Huang_ had _other plans?_

“With who?” Donghyuck demanded as he chased Renjun to his locker after lunch had ended. “Your _other friends?_ ”

“You’re saying ‘other friends’ as if I’m not allowed to have other friends,” said Renjun evenly.

“You’re not!” Donghyuck exclaimed and violently tapped on the inside of his wrist, AKA the spot where Donghyuck believed (and knew) to be the most logical place for matching BFFL tattoos[12]. “And don’t slither out of the question. Who are you hanging out with?”

Renjun just shrugged and tugged out his Korean textbook off the shelf of his immaculate locker. Donghyuck had no idea how he kept it so organized in the midst of the doom and gloom that was senior year. His own locker was so messy that several freshmen had actually mistaken it for the garbage can when he had it open.

“Don’t make me do it,” threatened Donghyuck.

“Go ahead,” said Renjun.

“I’m really gonna.”

“Do it, I don’t care.”

Donghyuck took a deep breath and unleashed hell. “Please, please, please, Injunnie please, tell me who it is, Injun please, please, tell me tell me tell me tell me please please _please_ , Injun tell me please now tell me now please tell me who it is Injun _please please please_ —”

“Wow,” said Chenle, whose locker was next to Renjun’s, awed. “You’re even worse than me.”

“I am so happy you have reached self-actualization,” Donghyuck said to Chenle. He continued his onslaught. “Who are you hanging out with? What’s their name? Do they go here? Older or younger?” He paused. “Also, do you know their childhood pet’s name and the name of the street they grew up on and their social security number?”

“Do you want to know so that you can run the world’s most thorough background check or so that you can commit identity theft?” Renjun asked wryly.

Donghyuck waved his hand noncommittally. It was then he remembered the stupid mandatory speech class they all had to take freshman year, and he decided to put the cushy grade-padding A+ he scammed out of it to good use.

 **A)** ETHOS: “I’ve been your best friend for the last four years, don’t you think I earned the right to know?”

“I don’t hound _you_ when you hang out with other people. Stop being so clingy,” countered Renjun.

 **B)** LOGOS: “But you need to tell us because what if they’re a serial killer and their crimes get discovered and reported on the news but you don’t see it because you’re hanging out with them and if we don’t know their name how will we warn y—”

“You’ve been watching too much BuzzFeed Unsolved, Hyuck.”

 **C)** PATHOS: Ugh, time to bring out the big guns. Donghyuck willed crocodile tears into his eyes and wailed, “Injun, you’re hurting my feelings by not telling me and I would _so_ tell you if our situation was switched—”

His phone went off with Yerim’s delivery and the tears evaporated instantly. “Oh, shoot, I gotta get this,” he said, already turning away to relish in—was that a cat-print toga? Like a big sheet of fabric from the craft store with cat heads all over it? Ugh, _hot._ “But don’t let me forget about this conversation.”

“Don’t worry,” Renjun reassured him sweetly, slamming his locker shut. “I won’t.”

 

* * *

 

True to form, Donghyuck had forgotten about the conversation and Renjun had coveniently managed to avoid him for the rest of the day.

“Who the hell does he even think he is?” Donghyuck fumed, making himself at home on Jaemin’s couch and nestling forcefully into Jeno’s side, who generally accepted his cuddles like an existentialist confronting the inevitability of death: somehow unwilling and accepting at the same time. “Making new friends like that?”

“And I laid out the perfect trap for him, too,” complained Jaemin, basking in the afterglow of Jenny Han’s masterpiece. “Renjun loves romcoms and emotions or whatever. It was the perfect opportunity to guilt him into leaking the deets.”

“First of all, he hates romcoms. And second, don’t lie,” said Jeno, absentmindedly patting Donghyuck’s head. Donghyuck was just happy that the four years he spent classically conditioning Jeno into petting him every time they cuddled was finally paying off. “I saw you wipe away a tear when Lara Jean and her dad talked at the end. You just wanted to watch it for yourself.”

“I did _not_ ,” said Jaemin in a tone that clearly revealed he did. To Donghyuck, he said, “Anyway, you believe me now? That he has a secret boyfriend?”

Donghyuck considered this. While it was true that Renjun was acting shady and that Donghyuck didn’t always have the best read on him, Jaemin was clearly insane for jumping straight into the secret boyfriend conclusion. For all they knew, Renjun’s sketchiness could just be a manifestation of senior year stress, just like how Jeno had replaced his personality with working out 30 hours a day and Donghyuck’s crush on Mark Lee somehow intensified tenfold with each passing day and Jaemin was now doggedly cosplaying as a private eye tailing a rich trophy wife’s cheating husband or whatever, although Donghyuck would probably die if he ever called Renjun a trophy wife to his face.

“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “It might not be a secret boyfriend. Maybe he joined a really embarrassing club.”

“Maybe he just didn’t want to come over because he’s not into Peter Kavinsky,” suggested Jeno.

“Because he _already has a boyfriend_ ,” Jaemin tacked on.

“You fucking take that back, Jeno,” Donghyuck seethed. “Name one person on Earth who isn’t into Peter Kavinsky.” Jeno (Dumb) and Jaemin (Dumber) exchanged looks, then shrugged in agreement. “Besides, you can have a boyfriend and still be in love with Peter Kavinsky, just like how I’m in love with him and Mark at the same time.”

“Yeah,” said Jeno, peering down over the top of Donghyuck’s head, “but Mark’s not your boyfriend.”

“I hate you,” Donghyuck said without venom. To Jaemin, he said, “Are you in cahoots with Renjun and this is just an elaborate ploy to make me look dumb? I hate looking dumb,” he added glumly.

“I would never, ever do that to you,” said Jaemin insincerely.

Donghyuck recognized that he was lying through his teeth, but he could admit that Jaemin’s original plan did make some sense. He was too souped up from the feel-good cinematic tour de force they had just watched—no, _experienced_ —to care. Instead, he snuggled even deeper into Jeno’s neck, which shouldn’t even be possible, but Donghyuck always managed to find a way to worm his way into something when he really put his mind to it.

 

* * *

 

The next day was relatively uneventful. Jaemin reported that Renjun had denied that his secret boyfriend was Jinyoung Bae or Daehwi Lee and that Daehwi was too young anyway because he was seventeen and that he called him a bitch when he escaped Jaemin’s clutches. First of all, duh, Donghyuck had already known that he was going to deny it, considering it was a _secret_ boyfriend. And secondly, double duh, he _would_ call Jaemin a bitch. This was Renjun after all.

As for the age bit, it did seem a bit strange, but Renjun did turn eighteen earlier that year. Maybe he was going through a midlife crisis. Still, it was nothing to lose sleep over, which Donghyuck assumed Jaemin was doing right now[13]. Jeno had texted Donghyuck complaining that Jaemin was being annoying, to which Donghyuck had responded `duh he’s BEEN annoying. what, have you never noticed?`

> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `yeah but like more annoying that unusual`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `than`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `usual`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `he wont stop sending me screenshots of injuns ig followers`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `ive seen more boys tonite than ive ever seen in my life and idc`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `m just tryna play fortnite`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `should i block him`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `like just 4 a few hours lol`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `what do u think`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `hyuck`
> 
> **Handsome and Boring**  
>  `???????`

  
Donghyuck had stopped caring and muted their conversation, like, seven texts ago, so good luck with… whatever Jeno’s problem was.

Once Jeno had finally stopped blowing up his phone and he got some peace and quiet, Donghyuck put away his books for tomorrow morning and dived into his bed, the first step in his nightly routine of Instagram-stalking Mark Lee, the only person he followed that did not follow him back. Many a sleepless night he laid awake and considered unfollowing and following Mark just for the notification, but something always stopped him. It was partly because his ego wouldn’t be able to handle it if Mark saw it and _still_ didn’t follow him back in 2018, but also because, well.

It was… kind of weird? Feelings were weird. Donghyuck had spent so much time and energy crushing on from Mark from afar that Mark didn’t even feel like a real person anymore, despite the embarrassing baby photos and almost-forgotten mementos from puberty that Yerim sent him on a rigid schedule. Casually Instagram-stalking Mark was all fun and games, but actually confronting him seemed impossibly scary. He was Donghyuck’s white whale[14], and Donghyuck’s method of hunting him was to refresh his following feed every two minutes.

> **renjun** liked **mhlee99** ’s post. _52s_

  
Uh, what the hell?

Donghyuck didn’t know that Renjun knew Mark. Well, obviously Renjun has heard Donghyuck go on at length about him, but he didn’t think they knew each other on a liking-Instagram-posts level. Not even Donghyuck had the balls to like Mark’s posts.

Maybe Renjun was also awake and Instagram-stalking Mark (great minds did think alike) and had accidentally liked his most recent post and was now anxiety-sweating through his sheets, desperate to unlike before Mark saw, and then liked and unliked it several times because his sweat rendered the touchscreen unresponsive, a situation that Donghyuck _definitely_ could _not_ empathize with. Always a fan of schadenfreude, Donghyuck snickered at the mental image of Renjun panicking at two in the morning over something so insignificant over a boy that he didn’t even know.

Amused and a little smug, Donghyuck was about to pull up their text thread when he refreshed his feed again.

> **renjun** liked **mhlee99** ’s post. _2m_

  
He frowned. “A glitch?” he wondered out loud, trying to ignore the unexplained bump in his heartbeat. This time he went directly to Mark’s profile. 

> **mhlee99**  
>  It’s a longass ride  
>  Juss living and loving life hahaha :-D  
>  John 15:13  
>  Followed by **renjun** , **yeri.k** , **suhjohn** \+ **31 more**

  
Donghyuck normally wasn’t one to spiral immediately into catastrophic thinking but Jaemin’s words wouldn’t stop echoing in his head.

_Have you guys noticed how weird Renjun’s being? Like he has a secret boyfriend or something._

Renjun was trying to let Donghyuck down easy, he realized with a sickening lurch in his chest, all the air squeezed out of his lungs and blood wrung out of his heart. He was avoiding everyone because he probably felt guilty and kept running away from Donghyuck when he pried because he didn’t know what to say. The secret boyfriend was a secret for a reason, and Renjun was a good friend and didn’t want to hurt Donghyuck’s feelings.

But it hurt anyway. It really fucking sucked.

Donghyuck tried to ignore the stupid, stupid burning in his eyes by squeezing his eyes shut, burying his face behind his palms, thinking about the hilarious time Mr. Byun was convinced that Jeno and Jaemin were in love. But nothing worked. An unwanted tear escaped, curving down the plane of his cheek, and hit the pillow anyway.

In the photo, Mark had an arm wrapped around a taller friend whom he didn’t recognize. He looked happy, a little tipsy, nose crinkled in a bright grin. His (admittedly really hot) friend was a bit blurry, bowled over in screeching laughter, eyes squeezed shut. Donghyuck knew he should stop staring at it but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. It was the ultimate, world’s shittiest kind of self-flagellation.

At least it had a terrible caption. _My manz_ , Mark had wrote and added a prayer hands emoji. And he picked a terrible filter, too, in typical Mark fashion. Renjun hadn’t left a comment but every time Donghyuck closed his eyes, there his username was, emblazoned behind his eyelids.

“Fuck,” Donghyuck whispered, shoving his phone under the covers, and tried to go to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Donghyuck was miserable at lunch the next day. He had went all out in the caf—fries and nugs and a chocolate chip cookie, not a green thing in sight—as #selfcare, but if he had known it was only going to end up being Jeno’s second lunch, he wouldn’t have spent so much. He had only managed to nibble half a chicken nugget before taking pity on Jeno and his insane fitness protein shake/steamed kale/grilled chicken/whatever diet and pushed his tray towards him without a word (or had Jeno taken pity on _him?_ ).

“Thanks, you saved my life,” said Jeno.

“Hey, I got you, buddy,” replied Donghyuck, attempting to smile. From the way Jeno furrowed his eyebrows at his face, Donghyuck gathered that it was not a very pretty one.

It was all around bleak at their table, and not only because midterms had fallen upon them, although it certainly did not help. “Welcome to hell week, boys,” Donghyuck had declared, issuing a disclaimer for his mood before anyone—Renjun—could ask.

“Wait,” Jisung said, narrowing his eyes at Donghyuck’s lack of appetite. “I thought hell week was the week _before_ midterms.”

“Jisung,” Donghyuck said tiredly.

“What?”

“Is it a week?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“And do you feel like you’re in hell?”

“Uh… I guess?”

Donghyuck gave him a pointed _I told you so_ look.

It seemed as though Donghyuck was not the only poor downtrodden, worldweary bastard at the table. Jaemin somehow looked just as tired and depressed as Donghyuck did, and had gone on a very long and very sobering rant about how nothing lasts forever and that the construct of society was humanity’s self-fulfilling prison or whatever[15]. Personally, Donghyuck thought that he had no excuse being this mopey since he was not the one who went through the emotional equivalent of getting shived.

Renjun, who hadn’t really looked Donghyuck in the eye at all that day, frowned at Jaemin and asked softly, “Hey, are you okay?”

“I wanna be okay, but I am _not_ okay,” wailed Jaemin, and to everyone’s alarm, he promptly burst into tears. All of Donghyuck’s latent mom friend sirens blared on full blast in his heart. “I have a page and a half of my history paper left to write still, and then I have to study for calc tomorrow, and Mr. Zhang hasn’t said if he’ll write me a rec yet and I’m worried he’s going to say no and then I’ll have to ask Mr. Do and Mr. Do _hates_ me. And I’m probably going to fail physics on Friday.”

“You will not fail physics, Jaemin Na,” Renjun said resolutely, putting his hands on Jaemin’s shoulders in a way that somehow seemed both forceful and comforting. “I’ll send you Sicheng’s notes from when he took physics.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Jaemin weepily.

“And I know your M.O. is doubling the size of the periods but did you double the space after every sentence?”

“Fuck,” said Jaemin, sniffling the last of his tears away. “You’re a genius.”

“A con artist,” amended Jeno with a mouthful of Donghyuck’s cookie.

“Same difference,” Donghyuck couldn’t help but chime in, despite resolving not even twelve hours ago to not acknowledge Renjun for at least a week. Just _really_ ice him out.

“Whatever,” Renjun said, only huffing a little[16]. “Anything else you need?”

Jaemin sniffled harder than necessary, squinted, and looked up at the ceiling all pathetic. That fake-crying, crocodile-teared bastard. Donghyuck knew that trick. He was the one who taught it to him. “Um, just one thing.”

Renjun stared at him, unimpressed, but gestured for him to go ahead.

“Can you tell me who your secret—”

“I don’t have a secret boyfriend,” Renjun said unconvincingly, twiddling his thumbs[17].

“Renjun,” Jaemin said incredulously, gesturing at Renjun’s flushed cheeks. “Something’s obviously up. What’s the deal? Why can’t you just tell us? Friends, right?”

“Yeah,” Jeno said, and when Renjun looked at him, betrayal written over his face, Jeno shrugged. “I wouldn’t keep a secret from you guys.”

Renjun swiveled his head to look at Donghyuck. “Hyuck,” he said, pleading.

Donghyuck’s initial reaction was that he didn’t want anything to do with it. Having now understood why Renjun wanted to keep the secret boyfriend a secret, Donghyuck had no intention of airing it out in the open. He would much rather never talk or hear about Mark Lee ever again and wait until his friends either got old and forgot about Donghyuck’s humiliating crush or, like, straight up died. Loose lips sink ships and all.

But if Donghyuck was being honest with himself, Mark Lee was just a dumb albeit cute boy who didn’t even know he existed and there was zero chance of them ever getting matching tattoos. Renjun Huang was smart and not ugly and one of his best friends in the world and, if Donghyuck had his way, there was a _one hundred_ percent chance of them getting matching tattoos.

“I just feel like we should be able to share stuff with each other,” Donghyuck said. “You’re— _we’re_ all best friends. Shouldn’t that count for something?”

Here was the thing about their friendship: Donghyuck was mischievous and Jaemin was chaotic and Jeno was steadfast and Renjun was aggressive, and logically they really shouldn’t work together but they did. And it was very likely that at one point or another, after getting maudlin off of watery Miller Lite they stole from somebody’s parents at a corny sleepover, they had wept all over each other and declared their undying love and loyalty[18]. 

“Fine,” Renjun relented. “You guys probably will hound me until the end of time if I don’t tell you, right?”

“Right,” all three chorused.

He sighed, sweeping his bangs away from his face. Donghyuck noticed that his hands stopped shaking. “Meet me by the back entrance by the handball courts after school.” He paused, then aggressively pulled them into a group hug, though it ended up being more like just a mess of sixteen tangled limbs like it always did. “I’m sorry, guys. You’re all right. Best friends.”

“Tramp stamps,” whispered Donghyuck into Renjun’s ear, hoping that Renjun would be mollified enough to agree. He was not, and Donghyuck’s hair refused to lie flat for the rest of the day, but it was still worth a try.

 

* * *

 

“Dude,” said Jaemin, impressed.

“Oh, damn,” agreed Jeno.

“Wait, holy shit,” was all Donghyuck could say, mouth agape.

“Please stop embarrassing me,” Renjun said, voice muffled. He was in the middle of hiding his flushed face with his turtleneck, like a blushing bride hiding behind her veil on her wedding day. Or maybe he was trying to smother himself in an attempt to forcefully eject himself from the conversation forever. It was hard to tell with Renjun sometimes.

“You’re truly an inspiration to us all,” said Jaemin, mesmerized, unable to tear his eyes away from Renjun’s formerly secret boyfriend.

Renjun’s boyfriend could only be described like this: hot. And tall. And tan. And buff. Like, he was so yoked that he looked like he rescued kittens stuck in trees for fun but _also_ was very tender with them. And his hands were so big that Donghyuck was sure he could fit like five kittens in each. That was good—Renjun loved efficiency. And he had a smile so wide and infectious that they couldn’t help smiling back, although Donghyuck was smiling for an entirely different reason than Jaemin and Jeno were. 

Donghyuck knew him. Well, more accurately, he had seen him before.

“Wow, Renjun, your friends are so cute and small!” the boyfriend said with a voice that projected so well it was hard to believe he wasn’t speaking into a megaphone. He curled a huge hand around Renjun’s nape, then languidly slid it down the curve of his spine, where he stopped at the small of his back. It was so intimate that Donghyuck had to look away.

Renjun pouted and actually whined, which was bad enough, but _then_ he went ahead and buried his face into the boyfriend’s ripped biceps, which was truly disgusting.

“What the hell,” complained Jaemin. “Who are you and what did you do with our Injunnie?”

The boyfriend laughed. “I’m Lucas,” he introduced himself, grinning sunnily. “Mark Lee’s friend. Oh, that’s right—you guys know him, don’t you?”

 

* * *

 

 **Footnotes**  

1 Further deliberation consisted mostly of Donghyuck moping and kicking his feet about as he spent long, hard nights holed up in his room with a SAT practice exam in one hand and a pen he managed to steal from Mark Lee last year in the other. Junior year truly _was_ the best. Senior year sucked ass and MTV lied to them all. The only thing that kept him from expiring was zooming in on his secondhand piece-of-shit iPhone (that he still had to pay $180 for) as far in as it would physically allow him to zoom in on the Yerim-supplied contraband of Mark’s stupid, perfect face (that Yerim charged 69 cents per photo, a price he gladly paid).  [return to text]

2 Judgment Day fell on February 1st for him and November 1st for the poor overachievers who were conditioned into believing that Early Action meant guaranteed action. They probably still had hopes and dreams and did _not_ want to slave away over applications in the midst of holiday parties (which, okay, Donghyuck supposed that was smart) and _did_ , instead, want to be able to shoo away nosy aunties and uncles by divulging what schools they were applying to and, like, rub their acceptance emails into the normal/delinquent kids’ faces or something. [return to text]

3 Donghyuck and Jeno’s conversation went something like this: “What the hell are you even doing here?” / “Oh my God, Jeno, you can’t say the H-word, dumbass! Please have some goddamn respect. We’re in a church for Christ’s sake.” [return to text]

4 More specifically, times like **A)** Jisung running his mouth off about driver’s ed and administering pop quizzes on traffic laws that Donghyuck had never ever heard of before despite being in possession of a license and **B)** Jaemin, who had been driven into a YouTube wormhole from the stress of college apps until four in the morning and had emerged a broken man, simultaneously educating them about alien/government/water supply/Beyoncé conspiracy theories and guzzling a Monster.  [return to text]

5 He had no context for these photos but he wasn’t about to look a gift Yerim in the mouth. Wait, no, ew. Anyway, was it for a dare? Did Jaehyun and Johnny decide to haze him? Did Mark pay for yoga pants with his own money to wear them willingly? Donghyuck didn’t give a hoot and Mark’s ass looked great. [return to text]

6 Donghyuck thought about Jaemin’s embarrassing crush on Renjun when they were in the ninth grade maybe once every other day. It gave him the strength to go on, even when Mark’s very corny ( _but kind of hot?_ ) band uniform headshots couldn’t. [return to text]

7 Their Venmo transactions were all public. It was not because Donghyuck had balls of steel but because Mark was geriatric when it came to technology. Once, he posted an accidental blurry front cam selfie to his Snapchat story and it stayed up for the full 24 hours because he didn’t know how to delete it. He hadn’t even realized that Donghyuck had taken a screenshot despite the little green icon betraying that very fact. Even worse, he was the kind of person who wrote “Hahahahahaha” and refused to acknowledge the existence of emojis, instead choosing to type :-) for smiley faces. Colon, hyphen, end parenthesis. [return to text]

8 AP Psych was the AP Donghyuck took just to take an AP—actually it was the AP _everyone_ took just to take an AP. He had heard from Yerim who heard from Mark who heard from Johnny who heard from Jaehyun (as went the typical procession) that Ten had left an entire essay portion blank when he took his AP test and _still_ got a 5. A legend.  [return to text]

9 What tattoo they would actually get was still hotly debated and was contingent on Renjun’s mom **A)** begrudgingly allowing it or **B)** never finding out about it at all. Assuming the latter, Donghyuck championed the ironic butterfly, Jeno preferred a simple `00`, Jaemin wanted the `0`s to touch so that it looked like an infinity symbol because he was a bit basic, and Renjun publicly called them idiots but Donghyuck knew that deep down inside, that bitch wanted a butterfly/`00`/infinity sign just like the rest of them.  [return to text]

10 Why was it that Renjun weighed maybe upwards of 50 pounds but it always surprised Donghyuck when he crushed his windpipe with, like, 50,000 psi of force? Where did he store the power in that tiny, frail, hateful body? [return to text]

11 Renjun frequently argued that he did not have a mean bone in his body and that he always did everything lovingly. What a joke. [return to text]

12 Donghyuck had initially suggested matching tramp stamps as a joke (or maybe not? He was trying to feel the crowd), which Renjun vetoed with a chokehold like a freaking caveman. And then not even two weeks later, Jaemin also jokingly suggested matching tramp stamps because he was a joke-stealer and Renjun _laughed_ and _ruffled Jaemin’s hair_. Honestly what the hell? Was life even fair?  [return to text]

13 Jaemin was, in fact, losing sleep over it. The last time Donghyuck saw him, he had his phone glued to his face, going through Renjun’s friends on Instagram with a fine-toothed comb and a maniacal sheen in his eyes that Donghyuck only ever saw in comically evil movie villains. [return to text]

14 Shoutout to 9th Grade Honors Lit, which had contained Greatest Hits such as Jaemin volunteering to read Juliet every time they read scenes from _Romeo and Juliet_ out loud in class and Jeno dying from mono and getting to skip the midterm. Donghyuck still couldn’t decide if he thought Jeno had planned that or not. The pro to Jeno sabotaging his body to skip the midterm would be that Jeno was now Donghyuck’s coolest BFFL. The con would be that it turned out that Jeno was cooler than Donghyuck the entire time.  [return to text]

15 Because he was preoccupied throwing himself an internal pity party, he hadn’t been listening to Jaemin exactly, but they had just read Camus in 12 AP Lit so his speech was probably similarly doom and gloom. Donghyuck did his best not to be one of those teenaged edgelords but he, too, was at that very special age when a boy only had one thing on his mind: existentialism. [return to text]

16 Renjun was historically terrible at accepting compliments. Once during junior year when they all burnt out and dead inside from cramming for the SATs, they had all ganged up on him and showered him with excessive praise with only the slightest insincerity, just to see him stutter and his face explode. It promptly stopped, however, when Donghyuck had said, “Injunnie, what do you even do with a national treasure like your hands?” and Renjun had replied in a very even-keeled murderer voice, “Strangle assholes like you.” [return to text]

17 It was funny how they had all been friends for so long that there seemed liked there was nothing left to discover about each other (although, as Donghyuck had discovered last night, you could never truly know a person after all). After several friendship-annihilating game nights of Uno and Mario Kart, Jaemin had claimed that Renjun’s tell was that he bit his lip and looked down to the side, but Donghyuck knew that his real tell was that he wouldn’t stop fidgeting with his hands. [return to text]

18 And by “it was very likely,” he meant that it had happened more than once. They were all champions of the #BFFLs front and truly did love each other. (Maybe even an embarrassing amount.) [return to text]


End file.
